In a continuing effort to improve the quality of shipping fruits, I, the inventor, typically hybridize a large number of peach, nectarine, plum, apricot, and cherry seedlings each year. I also grow a lesser number of open pollinated seeds of each of these fruits. The present invention relates to a new and distinct variety of interspecific tree, which has been denominated varietally as ‘PLUMSWEET IX’.
During a typical blooming season I isolate as seed parents both individual and groups of different plum tress by covering them with screen houses. A hive of bees is placed inside each such house, and bouquets to provide pollen from different plum, apricot, and interspecific plum-apricot hybrid trees are placed in buckets near the trees approximately every two days for the duration of the bloom. During 1999 one such house containing ‘BRADGREEN’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 8,498) plum was crossed by me in this manner. To pollinate this plum, I selected bouquets from several sources of apricot and interspecific plum-apricot hybrid trees without keeping specific written details. Upon reaching maturity the fruit from this plum tree was harvested, and the seeds were removed, cracked, stratified and germinated as a group with the label “H9”. They were grown as seedlings on their own root in my greenhouse and upon reaching dormancy transplanted to a cultivated area of my experimental orchard located near Le Grand, Calif. in Merced County (San Joaquin Valley). During the summer of 2002 the claimed variety was selected by me as a single plant from the group of seedlings described above. Subsequent to origination of the present variety of interspecific tree, I asexually reproduced it by budding and grafting in the experimental orchard described above, and such reproduction of plant and fruit characteristics were true to the original plant in all respects. The reproduction of the variety included the use of ‘Nemaguard’ (unpatented) rootstock upon which the present variety was compatible and true to type.
The present variety is similar to ‘BRADGREEN’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 8,498) plum by being self-unfruitful and by producing fruit that is large in size and sweet in flavor, but is quite distinguished therefrom by blooming much later and by producing fruit that is a two-tone red and yellowish green in skin color, that has significant red in the flesh color, and that matures about two weeks earlier.
The present variety is most similar to ‘PLUMSWEETTHREE’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 15,235) interspecific plum tree by being self-unfruitful and by producing fruit that is a red and yellowish green two-tone in skin color, semi-freestone in type, and large in size, but is distinguished therefrom by producing fruit that has a significant amount of red in the flesh color and that matures about six days later.